Warren said new techniques like crowd-sourcing — scaled-up variations on Wikipedia — make it possible to collect valuable information from millions of ordinary consumers who report problems as they arise. Using new systems to organize and find patterns in all that information, Warren said, the bureau could be able to spot new enforcement targets in a matter of days — an unheard-of response time for traditional regulators.

How exactly will a centralized complaint system work in real life? It’s too early to say. But clearly, the web—obviously the fastest means of spreading critical, timely info—will be involved, as it should. Once there’s a reliable system in place allowing people to communicate in a time-sensitive, trustworthy forum, and once there’s an agency capable of reacting quickly to scams and regulation violations, Warren says: